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A great presentation by Anjali Sarker of Toilet Plus on their strategy and reasoning for introducing toilets that work based on financial technical sustainable and social criteria. Toilet Plus is in the early phase of it plan.

” DEFECATION! DISEASE! DEATH! In Bangladesh, each year 69000 children die from diarrhea largely because of unhygienic sanitation. 68% of the villagers use unhygienic pit latrines or defecate openly. Though both govt and NGOs are trying to solve this problem, their efforts largely fail because poor villagers- 1)simply lack motivation to change their sanitation behavior or 2)can’t afford the shift to safe sanitation.

TOILET+ /Toilet Plus introduced as A HYGIENIC AND AFFORDABLE SANITATION SOLUTION. It’s a urine diverting dry toilet and is structurally similar to Ecosan. It can recycle 100% waste to produce organic fertilizer and is flood resistant. Toilet+ ($110 value) is made affordable to the villagers through microcredit from partner MFI.

Toilet+ OFFER COLLECTIVE PROFIT & RESPONSIBILITY. Households form cooperatives,apply for microcredit, and become collectively responsible to repay the total monthly installments to MFI. Member households get toilets from Toilet+ and Toilet+ get paid by MFI. Members sell waste (human and other bio-waste) to Toilet+ and Toilet+ convert waste into organic fertilizer for selling to agro firms. By selling waste, a cooperative gets $70 a month (75% of the collective installments) and each household pays only $1.3 out of pocket to repay the collective monthly installments. Members create strong peer pressure on one another to use toilet so that they can repay collective loan easily.

THE MODEL TURNS TO A SELF-SCALABLE AND SELF-SUSTAINABLE SANITATION CHAIN. Cooperatives will continue to earn revenue from sale of waste after repaying the microcredit in 2.25 years. Understanding the high profitability of financing toilets, enthusiastic cooperative members will start lending non-users to purchase Toilet+ just like MFIs. Users will use peer pressure to make other non-users purchase and use Toilet+ with cooperative financing. Thus cooperative will grow and members will earn more revenue from sale of waste from their financed toilets.

Toilet+ IGNITES THE SPARK, COMMUNITY MAKES IT A REVOLUTION. 1)The more a family uses Toilet+, the more it earns 2)Many Cooperatives will finance others’ toilets as a profitable business and thus expand the size of the cooperative. 3)Fewer fatal diseases, cleaner environment, and more income will improve the living standard of community permanently. “